[Graham Eppelstun]

Hi, I have a MRCA applicant that has applied for a pensioner rebate. He has supplied a letter with stating his entitlements, I have done an online confirmation which come back PCC N, and GCH Yes, but have checked with him the past and not stamped with TPI, EDA etc.
He is still insists he is entitled as the pensioner rebate says MRCA applicants need to provide a letter from the DVA (which I have checked with them, but their factsheet refers them back to Council)
Any help appreciated.

Graham Eppelstun
Weddin Shire Council

[Andrew Butcher]

Hi Graham

It has always been my view that if a ratepayer has the Gold Card and it is not stamped TPI or EDA they are required to be PCC approved. The Regulations define an eligible person as:

Clause 134 (a) persons who receive a pension, benefit or allowance under Chapter 2 of the Social Security Act 1991 of the Commonwealth, or a service pension under Part III of the Veterans’ Entitlements Act 1986 of the Commonwealth, and who are entitled to a pensioner concession card issued by or on behalf of the Commonwealth Government,

The pertinent word is ‘and’ following on from “or a service pension under Part III of the Veterans’ Entitlements Act 1986 of the Commonwealth”. Essentially from above it has always been my opinion and practice to allow Gold Card stamped TPI or EDA (which is identified in the Veterans Entitlement Act), however if not stamped check on-line with Centrelink and if GCH = Yes but PCC = No the ratepayer is not an eligible pensioner.

Happy to rethink if any other council has contrary advice.

Hope this is helpful.

Regards,

Andrew

[Trevor Holland]

Good Afternoon Graham

Not sure whether DLG Circular No 09-34 will be of any assistance in solving this problem for you. If you don’t have a copy of the circular let me know and I can email you a copy.

We take the approach that if the ratepayer provides a copy of the necessary paperwork indicating that they are in receipt of the MRCA paperwork they are eligible to receive the benefit of the rebate. Regular confirmation checks are undertaken to confirm ongoing eligibility. As there are a relatively small number of MRCA’s it is not difficult to keep a track of them.

Think you will find that MRCA’s do not receive the PCC Entitlement as their payments are made under a different Commonwealth legislation.

In short I do not think there are any grounds not to grant the rebate that has been requested by your MRCA ratepayer.

Regards
Trevor

[Matthew Saunders]

Hi all,

By my reading of the regulations there are two ways an MRCA recipient can be entitled to a rebate, and either way their eligibility can’t be confirmed doing a Centrelink or DVA online check as these will always come back as “Not entitled”:

REGULATION 134 (b1) persons who have received a lump sum mentioned in section 234 (1) (b) of the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 of the Commonwealth or are receiving a weekly amount mentioned in that paragraph, and do not have income and assets that would prevent them from being granted a pensioner concession card (assuming they were eligible for such a card),

MY INTERPRETATION: For these, I think we should refer the applicant to the DVA to get a letter to say that they have received a lump sum or weekly payment AND that they meet the assets and income test required for other eligible pensioners under the Veteran Entitlements Act 1986 (Cmwlth),assuming that they are not actually entitled as they are paid under a different Act to other pensioners (as Trevor pointed out as well). If a letter is provided from DVA, it would be OK to grant the rebate but ongoing future verification would be difficult if not impossible, without getting the owner to get a yearly letter confirming their eligibility (maybe keep them on and do every 3 to 5 years?).

REGULATION 134(d) persons who receive, or who at some point in their life have been eligible for, a Special Rate Disability Pension under the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 of the Commonwealth.

MY INTERPRETATION: These ones are a bit easier to confirm as they only need to have been entitled at some stage in their life to receive a disability payment under the MRC Act and they are then eligible and continually eligible for life. For these we will need a letter from DVA confirming this.

Unfortunately in either case, their eligibility will always come back in regular batch verifications with Centrelink/DVA as not being entitled, so you will be forever overriding these as being eligible.

I agree with Trevor that there are only a small number of them so it is easy to monitor. We only have one MRCA rebate at the moment.

Kind regards,
Matthew

[Graham Eppelstun]

Thankyou for your responses regarding the above. Appreciated.

Regards
Graham

[Carla Mete]

I believe we have one application on its way for a MRCA ratepayer so these comments have been very helpful! thanks everyone!

[Kylie Hampstead]

How do other Councils go about attaining the income and assets of the ratepayer.

We are currently relying on a Stat Dec. Not sure how else we gain this information.

I’ve spoken to DVA and they don’t take the income or assets into account when determining payment under the MRC Act so can’t provide this info.

Thanks
Kylie

[Lyndal McCann]

Hi all – finding this feed very helpful and have an application that appears to be once TPI and now MRCA and its posing even more questions…
In relation to running an individual verification in CCeS
1) For TPI/EDA – has anyone relied on the individual verifications showing a Yes in Disability Rate (Customer Details
Characteristic) to verify the TPI/EDA?
All our TPI/EDAs usually come back as Yes here, but this case is returning a No, even though the card shows TPI
We note all these tend to be PCC No and GCH Yes in the Card entitlements
2) For the MRCA verification – in the MRCA Entitlements section – we are seeing Characteristic of SRD as Yes.
We note it was a No @ 1/7/2022, but Yes @ 18/7/2022 for our ratepayer.
Is this sufficient to rely on as an individual verification? and use for date of eligibility?

[Matthew Saunders]

Hi Lyndal,

We had a similar one a few weeks ago. We got a copy of the card that had “TPI” on it but the disability was saying “No” in the verification and the customer was adamant that they were on a disability payment. On investigation we found he was receiving benefits under the MRCA. I guess customers who receive a Special Rate Disability are on a different disability type than standard DVA customers so for MRCA SRD payment recipients you need to look at the SRD field to say yes (as you did).

I didn’t realise that we could get MRCA results for the DVA enquiries but I contacted Centrelink and got ours updated yesterday. Before that we were asking the customers to provide a letter from the DVA so you have helped my by pointing that out (THANK YOU). If anyone else wants the MRC added to their results just contact the Centrelink Helpdesk: helpdesk.ccs@servicesaustralia.gov.au and they will send a form to fill out and return.

I also guess that the start date for the SRD is similar to the start date for a pension concession card where you keep trying different dates until you get a hit. I would rely on this start date unless the customer can provide other evidence of some other earlier start date.

Kind regards,

Matthew

[Cherie Muir]

Hi Matthew

Thanks for the heads up here about getting MRCA results added to our DVA enquiries. I have the form at hand now to make the change for Shoalhaven. I note the form cautions about any change to the results output will lead to changes in our bulk batch xml result files (makes sense). Before I go ahead I’m keen to check:

1. if you or anyone else has ran into any bulk import challenges following this change,
2. what rating software are you using (we are on TechOne P&R ci)
3. did you change your result output to reveal the Special Rate Disability entitlement only, or did you include any other MCRA results (like Overall Impairment Points)?

Forgive me all these questions on an old post 🙂 Thanks in advance.

[Matthew Saunders]

Hi Cherie,

At the time I asked Centrelink to add the MRCA results I wasn’t aware that a change to our individual checks would result in our batch enquiries not being compatible. It was when I ran my first batch enquiry that I realised that it wouldn’t work.

I didn’t have the resources to make the relevant change to the batch enquiry at the time so I had to get Centrelink to remove the MRCA results. As we are going through an upgrade soon with our internal rates system, I am waiting until that goes through before I look at re-visiting getting he MRCA results added.

We are with Tech 1 and moving to CiA in the next year.

Kind regards,

Matthew

[Cherie Muir]

Hey Matt, thanks so much for the additional information. I was very excited to get these added but I’ll hang back for now. Thanks again

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